Participated · Equity · Mar 2024

Carputty offers the Flexline product, a flexible line of credit to finance new and used vehicles, lease buyouts, and refinancing, using data-driven insights to provide transparent, dynamic financing. Founded in 2020 and operating from Atlanta, the company sells via multichannel partnerships and works with partners such as Turo and Lucid Motors USA. Carputty operates across 48 states and territories and is anticipated to open in California, representing ~12% of the U.S. auto market. The company plans to use new funding to aggregate large tranches of prime-plus consumer auto loans and to prepare for its first securitization. Carputty positions the Flexline to support onboarding new buyers and investors and to expand its direct-to-consumer offerings. The company has raised more than $100 million in total funding to date. Carputty offers Flexline™, a continuous line-of-credit product that members can use to finance new and used vehicles, buy out leases, or refinance existing auto loans. Consumer Flexline limits go up to $250,000 while Business Flexline reaches $800,000. The company sells an end-to-end, data-driven platform that can be embedded with business partners to provide integrated auto financing capabilities. Led by co-founders Patrick Bayliss (CEO) and Joshua Tatum (Chief Product Officer), Carputty is focused on accelerating platform development and expanding business collaborations. The company intends to use recent funding to drive commercialization and adoption across the U.S. Carputty had $21.96M in total funding after the announced round. Carputty is an Atlanta-based direct lender that aims to transform auto finance by returning control and transparency to consumers. Its proprietary software includes Flexline, which lets consumers place one or more cars on a single platform with rates set by a consumer profile, and V3 Valuation, a predictive analytics tool to estimate vehicle values. The platform underwrites loans for pre-approval without affecting consumer credit scores and supports refinancing, new and used purchases, and lease buyouts. Co-founders Patrick Bayliss (CEO) and Joshua Tatum (CPO) bring multi-dealership and consumer-lending experience. The company plans to use new capital to enhance its products, scale quickly, and deliver easy-to-use lines of credit and valuation tools. Carputty positions itself against a large market opportunity, citing roughly $1.4 trillion in outstanding auto loans in late 2020.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2021

Ando is a sustainable banking service that uses customer deposits to fund solar initiatives and other carbon-reducing projects. It offers a full suite of banking features including security, FDIC protection, referral bonuses, free overdraft protection and the opportunity to get paid up to two days early. Ando partners with local banks and credit unions to route deposits into sustainable loans for homeowners and businesses. Current partner banks include WebBank and Virginia Community Capital, with loan recipients such as homeowners, community gathering places, fire departments, veterinary clinics and other local businesses. The company is a Certified B Corp and launched in January 2021. Ando raised seed financing to continue expanding operations and its business reach.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2021

Wisio provides a marketplace where creators register and offer paid two-minute personalized videos or short written replies to followers for a fee set by the creator. The platform launched in 2020 and already hosts thousands of creators offering advice across categories like singing, mentoring, art criticism, and dating. Operating metrics cited in the article include an average willing-to-pay price of $32, roughly $40 spent by young users (age 19–44), 50% of users returning more than twice, 2,700 creators waiting to join, and a 20% commission taken by Wisio. The founders report the product generated "significant" revenue to date but did not disclose exact figures; they claim this traction was achieved without marketing spend. Wisio frames its product as building a new "Exclusive Attention" category and expects future users to expand beyond creators to include CEOs, politicians, actors, and business leaders. The company plans to automate onboarding and scale user acquisition as next steps.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2019

Kobiton offers a single mobile testing platform that integrates visual, functional and performance testing on real devices with next-generation, scriptless automation. The platform targets developers, QA and DevOps teams and aims to enable continuous mobile testing while reducing costly script maintenance. Kobiton cites AI capabilities and the Mobile Labs acquisition as drivers of its product innovation and capacity. Its customers include high-growth unicorns and blue-chip enterprises across retail, gaming, financial services, creative development and travel, explicitly naming IBM, Coca-Cola and Uber. The company has more than tripled its user base since its initial seed funding and reports compounded annualized ARR growth in excess of 250% over that period. Planned uses for new capital include accelerated R&D, new features for designers and developers, and expansion of its go-to-market footprint. Kobiton is an Atlanta-based mobile testing platform that enables developers and QA teams to test apps on real devices both on desks and through a cloud service. The company emphasizes machine-learning tools to help build tests and integrates with the open-source Appium framework. Kobiton launched in 2017 and has a portion of its team based in Vietnam. To accelerate growth and expand its customer base, Kobiton acquired fellow Atlanta mobile-testing vendor Mobile Labs and plans to layer its AI/ML technology on top of Mobile Labs’ solution. There will be an upgrade path for Mobile Labs customers, no immediate plan to sunset existing services, and some Mobile Labs brands may be renamed. The company will more than double the number of its U.S.-based employees as a result of the acquisition. Kobiton offers a real-device mobile app testing platform that supports manual and automated testing in the cloud or on-premise to help companies improve app quality and app store ratings. The company was spun out of KMS Technology’s Upstar Labs and launched in 2016. Its platform has been used by more than 500 companies and 35,000 testers and developers; customers include Cap Gemini, Frontier Airlines, GreenSky, Office Depot, and Q2. Kobiton is adding AI-powered “Record & Playback” scriptless Appium automation capabilities to enable users to record interactions and play them back across hundreds of devices. With the new product features, the company plans to expand sales, marketing, customer support, and product development. Kobiton positions this technology to accelerate adoption of mobile test automation at scale for organizations that struggle with real-device complexity and scripting. Kobiton provides a mobile device cloud platform that centralizes mobile app testing across public, local and private devices. The platform offers centralized testing history and insights, access to in-demand devices to supplement inventory, cost savings, and integrations with preferred IDEs and development tools. Customers include large retail, financial services, creative development and travel companies. The company has more than 370 customers and 25,000 users on its platform. Kobiton will use the funds to expand its sales and marketing efforts. The company was co-founded by Josh Lieberman and Vu Lam and is led by CEO Kevin Lee; it is based in Atlanta, GA.

Led · Equity · Jun 2018

Optii Solutions provides cloud-based software that automates and optimizes hospitality housekeeping and maintenance functions for hotels. Led by CEO Ray Pawlikowski, the platform is installed in more than 24,000 hotel rooms globally and counts clients such as Las Vegas Sands, Galaxy Entertainment Group, Intercontinental Hotel Group and Sodexo. The company raised approximately $4m in a funding round led by Thayer Ventures, Kinetic Ventures and NextGen Venture Partners, with participation from HOF Capital and Select Venture Partners. The article does not specify the instrument(s) used in the round. Optii plans to use the capital to expand U.S. operations, grow sales and marketing, build out its product portfolio and expand customer support functions. With significant room for growth in the dense U.S. hotel market, the company is positioned to scale deployments across additional properties. OPTii provides a cloud-based suite of housekeeping management solutions for hotels. Its software is designed to deliver productivity improvements, quality increases, training enhancements and a more structured and efficient operation. Led by CEO Daniel Ives, OPTii serves large international hotel clients throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and North America. The company is based in Las Vegas, Nevada and Mooloolaba, Australia. OPTii raised a $2.7M Series A and intends to use the funds to accelerate international expansion, expand its sales and marketing team, and add innovative new capabilities to its solutions.